Nightingale
by Xekstrin
Summary: A brief continuation of "The Limit". Lark ponders her reasons for living with the Storm Hawks for these past three years.


_Squadron _(the word "squadron" is scratched out, replaced with: "Lark's") _Log._

_Year Three on the _Condor_ today. I feel like writing something, though I'm not sure what. I'm also not sure how much I should reveal on paper in the event this gets stolen, or the wrong eyes read it. But I've been growing lax lately, as it seems like I'll never return to the life I used to live. Even now I'm still not sure if that's a good thing._

_I have a lot of secrets, obviously. I have the secret of my birth- of how my mother was married to my uncle when the affair happened between her and my father. I have the secret of death, hidden inside my eyes, power locked away from me, power that I might not ever be able to tap into again. I have the secret of my brief, tangled, innocent affair with Piper- innocent in the sense that I can count our kisses on one hand. _

_I was possessed by the spirit of my dead cousin, whom in life I called husband and brother in the same breath. I haven't spoken his name since the day he died a second time by Aerrow's hand._

_I am responsible for the death of two previous Dark Aces, one through an accident and the other with a shard from a broken Aurora Stone. The first one, his name was Immer, and I loved him as a sister should. His son is in my care now, a boy called Stern. He might not ever fully realize it, but the meaning of his name is "Star," and stars mean everything to me._

_I was the one who suggested that, for the fake name I have on all my fake passports and fake legal documents, I should take Aerrow's last name: Caballe. To anyone who doesn't know the truth, I am Nightingale Caballe. That's not so much of a secret, but what is secret is that I wish somehow I could have been married to Aerrow instead of my cousin. Aerrow is a good man. Ah, but sometimes I hate him for that…_

_The most vital and dangerous secret of my life at this point is that I am responsible for countless pillaging, deaths, rapes, and mutilations due to my actions in the brief episode of time that I called myself Master Cyclonis. If anyone other than the Storm Hawks found out, I'd be lynched on sight, or I would be hunted until Atmos was assured of my death._

_Through their involvement, the Storm Hawks have become privy to the knowledge of some of these secrets. _

_I guess that's one of the reasons I stay with them, though at first it was sort of like I had hired them on as bodyguards. I had nowhere else to go, and toting around a kid who can barely walk while trying to hide your true identity is not easy. I took over Stork's old room (and job as pilot), added an extra bed for Stern, and told Aerrow to keep flying the ship._

_I stay for three reasons:_

_Reason number one: Even though I could live in constant secrecy, I'm tired of that life. The Storm Hawks are the only people who know who I used to be, and why I used to be that way. I guess they understand it, even if being possessed is no excuse for the shit I've done. Or for the fact that I'd probably do all that shit again if given half the chance. Not that they know that._

_Reason number two: To stay in one place for too long makes me a target. Someone- somewhere- probably knows who I am and what I look like. Staying in one place makes me easy to monitor or ambush in the middle of the night. The safest thing is to keep on the move, and the safest place to be on the move is in the midst of the Storm Hawks, which now consist of a wallop far stronger than the average male of his species, the world's greatest sniper, and the Dark Ace himself. The pilot is dead. Their specialist? She's… gone. So they have me instead, to take care of the crystal needs of the ship even though my crystal skills aren't at the supernatural level they used to be, I'm still better than any hack who could try to Piper's place. _

_It's a symbiotic relationship at this point. Almost friendly._

_The third reason I stay is because I, for all my knowledge, still don't really know what it is to live in the real world. I can teach Stern how to care for himself, how to play the piano, how to know if the crystal supply on our ship is contaminated, how to at least zap something in the microwave when I'm unable to cook for him, but only the Storm Hawks can teach him how to live._

_And only then can I maybe learn how to return all the love I see in Stern's eyes._

"Psst! Hey! Lark!"

I look up from the log to see my nephew's red eyes flashing with mischief. He's hanging by his knees, legs shaking in the effort to keep from falling as he swings from the air vents in the ceiling. Setting my pen down, I recline my chair backwards so that I'm balanced on the two hind legs and look up at him, smiling thinly. "You think you're the first person to discover the other side of the _Condor_, Stern?" I ask him.

"No," he says, letting himself go and flipping in the air before landing in a three point stance, crouching with one hand on the floor for balance. He looks up at me, grinning. "Finn told me about it."

"And now you know, too." Falling forward, the front legs of the chair hit the floor with a dull thud instead of a normal metal clang. One of the first things I'd done was install a carpet in Stork's room. It was one of the coldest rooms in the ship. I wonder why. _Who knows how many other children roamed this ship in the hundred years the _Condor_ has been flying the skies of Atmos? _I pen down into the log. _Stork grew up on this ship, and Aerrow was most likely familiar with it if his mother was one of three Interceptors to survive the massacre on Terra Bogaton, and more importantly sister to the late Griffin of the Storm Hawks. _

"You're turning into a regular little Storm Hawk, you know that?" I tell him under my breath, hunched over the log again.

He flushes, runs up to me and surprises me with a hug. I return the love, hefting him up and sitting him on my lap. He's only six, and small for his age, and grossly affectionate, so he fits there and doesn't squish me and doesn't even mind the contact. In fact, he likes it. I quickly flip the page of the log though I'm not done with it, afraid Stern might see the name "Immer" and decide to read the rest of the log.

_He still has no idea. I'm not sure if I'll ever tell him._

"Who has no idea?" Stern asks me, absorbing every word I write. I guess he inherited my intelligence somehow, because just like me he's been able to read fluently since he was two years old. "Tell him what?"

"Aerrow," I lie smoothly, clicking the pen so that the head disappeared and shutting the book. There would be no more writing until Stern was gone again. "And his surprise birthday party."

"Well he's going to have to find out eventually," is Stern's logic, and he shrugs.

"Yes," I say, smoothing back his long black hair. "I guess he does."

**OoOoOo**

"Baby steps, Stern, you need to take baby steps."

Stern makes a loud noise of complaint, swinging his wooden sword around. "I hate baby steps!" he says. "Why can't I use that one?" He points now at the sword on the wall, double-bladed and naked, unequipped with any crystal.

Aerrow folds his arms over his chest, thumbs sticking out as he looks down at the boy. "So many reasons I can't even list them all," he says. I smirk from my seat on the floor nearby, quietly enjoying the burn in my muscles after our morning routine. "First of all, it's too heavy for you."

"Is not!"

Aerrow continues like he hadn't heard. "Secondly, it's got no crystal. You'd be bludgeoning me with useless scrap metal. Thirdly even if it was equipped for battle it's way too dangerous for someone with zero combat experience. Fourthly, nobody uses that sword but me."

"Why?"

"Because I'm the Dark Ace and you're not," is the smooth response. "Fifthly-" Stern covers his ears and scrunches his eyes shut. Aerrow's scarred lips twist upwards in a smile; he had won. He steps forward and taps the top of Stern's skull a few times with his practice sword. "Come on, bonehead. Let's get to work."

Stern has a sort of gentle balance about him, even when he's chasing Aerrow around with a practice sword. It is the grace of a dancer, but before long it would be the easy stalking lope of a predator, of a fighter. It wouldn't take long before he was flying in search of pirates, wolves of the sky. Maybe even at fourteen.

He does have roughly the same set of genes as Aerrow, after all.

_Are you training him to defend himself, or are you training him to replace you, Aerrow?_

**OoOoOo**

"Mmm, there's nothing I love more than burnt cheese."

Coming from anyone other than Junko, this statement might have been viewed as sarcastic. Still, I'm not sure if it's always a good thing to encourage Stern with certain things. He might start to think he can actually cook…

**OoOoOo**

Stern's mouth is hanging ajar, his body completely still save for the soft rise and fall of his breathing. "I got him," Finn offers, hefting up the sleeping boy with only a little grunt of exertion to show that it was harder than lifting him had been three years ago. Stern wraps his arms around Finn's neck, pushing his face against the sharpshooter's chest and sleeping on.

The limp of Finn's prosthetic leg is barely noticeable as he walks, taking Stern to bed.

I sit on the lone, ratty old sofa after everyone else has gone to visit the sandman as well. When I'm certain I'm alone again for the first time since this morning, I open up the notebook and write by the moonlight.

_I might be pilot in name, but I'll never be able to replace Stork. Not that I want to. But either way… I can't help but feel that, in learning what Stork could do, I somehow learned who Stork was. _

_So much of Stork was them. And knowing what he knows, I find it impossible to hate them._

_In a way, though, so much of me is them, too. When we were enemies, and now as symbioses who call each other "friend". At this point I can't fool myself into thinking I stay for Stern's sake alone. Odd as it may seem, I appear to have found a home among these Storm Hawks. They've let go of the past like I have not, cannot._

_And then there's Piper._

I pause, wondering if I should write what else is on my mind. Heh… might as well.

_Nobody really knows where Piper is right now. I know she's taken another name and is living by that now. Other than that, I hear many stories, that she's gone to live with distant family members, that she's a mercenary, that she's Arygyn's apprentice, that she's a pirate, a Cyclonian cultist, or even dead at the bottom of the Wastelands. But I'm almost positive she's trying to form her own squadron, even if it means taking on the trials to become a Sky Knight herself._

_Ridiculous, really._

_Why couldn't she have just stayed here, if that was the case?_

I remember everything, right then. Droplets of water, making the skin of her face slick under my fingertips. The metallic, rusty taste of blood on our lips, mingling with the salt of sweat from a harsh battle. I think we were like circles in a Venn diagram, slowly moving towards each other until we merged together as one circle. The only problem was that we kept on moving until one day I looked up and saw her opposite to me again. How ironic that for so long I told her she was just like me, only to realize that meant I was also just like her. We were still on opposing sides, the only difference being is that now I'm the one living on the _Condor_ and trying to be a good little girl while she... she makes me miserable. There's nothing but a sliver of old, pent-up emotions there to keep us somehow linked.

I write one more line before going to bed.

_Sometimes I think the only reason I stay is because on some level, I hope that one day, she will be here too._


End file.
